The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon

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Title: The Dynasts

       An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts,

              Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release Date: December 10, 2009 [EBook #4043]

Last Updated: January 9, 2013

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DYNASTS ***

Produced by Douglas Levy, and David Widger

THE DYNASTS

By Thomas Hardy

AN EPIC-DRAMA OF THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON,

IN THREE PARTS, NINETEEN ACTS, AND

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SCENES

The Time covered by the Action being about ten Years

     "And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,

          And trumpets blown for wars."

PREFACE

The Spectacle here presented in the likeness of a Drama is concerned with the Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago.

The choice of such a subject was mainly due to three accidents of locality. It chanced that the writer was familiar with a part of England that lay within hail of the watering-place in which King George the Third had his favourite summer residence during the war with the first Napoleon, and where he was visited by ministers and others who bore the weight of English affairs on their more or less competent shoulders at that stressful time. Secondly, this district, being also near the coast which had echoed with rumours of invasion in their intensest form while the descent threatened, was formerly animated by memories and traditions of the desperate military preparations for that contingency. Thirdly, the same countryside happened to include the village which was the birthplace of Nelson's flag-captain at Trafalgar.

When, as the first published result of these accidents, The Trumpet Major was printed, more than twenty years ago, I found myself in the tantalizing position of having touched the fringe of a vast international tragedy without being able, through limits of plan, knowledge, and opportunity, to enter further into its events; a restriction that prevailed for many years. But the slight regard paid to English influence and action throughout the struggle by those Continental writers who had dealt imaginatively with Napoleon's career, seemed always to leave room for a new handling of the theme which should re-embody the features of this influence in their true proportion; and accordingly, on a belated day about six years back, the following drama was outlined, to be taken up now and then at wide intervals ever since.

It may, I think, claim at least a tolerable fidelity to the facts of its date as they are give in ordinary records. Whenever any evidence of the words really spoken or written by the characters in their various situations was attainable, as close a paraphrase has been aimed at as was compatible with the form chosen. And in all cases outside the oral tradition, accessible scenery, and existing relics, my indebtedness for detail to the abundant pages of the historian, the biographer, and the journalist, English and Foreign, has been, of course, continuous.

It was thought proper to introduce, as supernatural spectators of the terrestrial action, certain impersonated abstractions, or Intelligences, called Spirits. They are intended to be taken by the reader for what they may be worth as contrivances of the fancy merely. Their doctrines are but tentative, and are advanced with little eye to a systematized philosophy warranted to lift the burthen of the mystery of this unintelligible world. The chief thing hoped for them is that they and their utterances may have dramatic plausibility enough to procure for them, in the words of Coleridge, that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. The wide prevalence of the Monistic theory of the Universe forbade, in this twentieth century, the importation of Divine personages from any antique Mythology as ready-made sources or channels of Causation, even in verse, and excluded the celestial machinery of, say, Paradise Lost, as peremptorily as that of the Iliad or the Eddas. And the abandonment of the masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy seemed a necessary and logical consequence of the long abandonment by thinkers of the anthropomorphic conception of the same.

These phantasmal Intelligences are divided into groups, of which one only, that of the Pities, approximates to the Universal Sympathy of human nature—the spectator idealized1 of the Greek Chorus; it is impressionable and inconsistent in its views, which sway hither and thither as wrought on by events. Another group approximates to the passionless Insight of the Ages. The remainder are eclectically chosen auxiliaries whose signification may be readily discerned. In point of literary form, the scheme of contrasted Choruses and other conventions of this external feature was shaped with a single view to the modern expression of a modern outlook, and in frank divergence from classical and other dramatic precedent which ruled the ancient voicings of ancient themes.

It may hardly be necessary to inform readers that in devising this chronicle-piece no attempt has been made to create that completely organic structure of action, and closely-webbed development of character and motive, which are demanded in a drama strictly self- contained. A panoramic show like the present is a series of historical ordinates [to use a term in geometry]: the subject is familiar to all; and foreknowledge is assumed to fill in the junctions required to combine the scenes into an artistic unity. Should the mental spectator be unwilling or unable to do this, a historical presentment on an intermittent plan, in which the dramatis personae number some hundreds, exclusive of crowds and armies, becomes in his individual case unsuitable.

In this assumption of a completion of the action by those to whom the drama is addressed, it is interesting, if unnecessary, to name an exemplar as old as Aeschylus, whose plays are, as Dr. Verrall reminds us,2 scenes from stories taken as known, and would be unintelligible without supplementary scenes of the imagination.

Readers will readily discern, too, that The Dynasts is intended simply for mental performance, and not for the stage. Some critics have averred that to declare a drama3 as being not for the stage is to make an announcement whose subject and predicate cancel each other. The question seems to be an unimportant matter of terminology. Compositions cast in this shape were, without doubt, originally written for the stage only, and as a consequence their nomenclature of Act, Scene, and the like, was drawn directly from the vehicle of representation. But in the course of time such a shape would reveal itself to be an eminently readable one; moreover, by dispensing with the theatre altogether, a freedom of treatment was attainable in this form that was denied where the material possibilities of stagery had to be rigorously remembered. With the careless mechanicism of human speech, the technicalities of practical mumming were retained in these productions when they had ceased to be concerned with the stage at all.

To say, then, in the present case, that a writing in play-shape is not to be played, is merely another way of stating that such writing has been done in a form for which there chances to be no brief definition save one already in use for works that it superficially but not entirely resembles.

Whether mental performance alone may not eventually be the fate of all drama other than that of contemporary or frivolous life, is a kindred question not without interest. The mind naturally flies to the triumphs of the Hellenic and Elizabethan theatre in exhibiting scenes laid far in the Unapparent, and asks why they should not be repeated. But the meditative world is older, more invidious, more nervous, more quizzical, than it once was, and being unhappily perplexed by—

                Riddles of Death Thebes never knew,

may be less ready and less able than Hellas and old England were to look through the insistent, and often grotesque, substance at the thing signified.

In respect of such plays of poesy and dream a practicable compromise may conceivably result, taking the shape of a monotonic delivery of speeches, with dreamy conventional gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers, the curiously hypnotizing impressiveness of whose automatic style—that of persons who spoke by no will of their own—may be remembered by all who ever experienced it. Gauzes or screens to blur outlines might still further shut off the actual, as has, indeed, already been done in exceptional cases. But with this branch of the subject we are not concerned here.

T.H.

September 1903.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

DETAILED CONTENTS.

PART FIRST

FORE SCENE

ACT FIRST

ACT SECOND

ACT THIRD

ACT FOURTH

ACT FIFTH

ACT SIXTH

PART SECOND

ACT FIRST

ACT SECOND

ACT THIRD

ACT FOURTH

ACT FIFTH

ACT SIXTH

PART THIRD

ACT FIRST

ACT SECOND

ACT THIRD

ACT FOURTH

ACT FIFTH

ACT SIXTH

ACT SEVENTH

AFTER SCENE

FOOTNOTES

DETAILED CONTENTS.

THE DYNASTS:  AN EPIC-DRAMA OF THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON

  Preface

  PART FIRST

  Characters

  Fore Scene.  The Overworld

  Act First:—

      Scene    I. England.  A Ridge in Wessex

        "     II. Paris.  Office of the Minister of Marine

        "    III. London.  The Old House of Commons

        "     IV. The Harbour of Boulogne

        "      V. London.  The House of a Lady of Quality

        "     IV. Milan.  The Cathedral

  Act Second:—

      Scene    I. The Dockyard, Gibraltar

        "     II. Off Ferrol

        "    III. The Camp and Harbour of Boulogne

        "     IV. South Wessex.  A Ridge-like Down near the Coast

        "      V. The Same.  Rainbarrows' Beacon, Egdon Heath

  Act Third:—

      Scene     I. The Chateau at Pont-de-Briques

        "      II. The Frontiers of Upper Austria and Bavaria

        "     III. Boulogne.  The St. Omer Road

  Act Fourth:—

      Scene     I. King George's Watering-place, South Wessex

        "      II. Before the City of Ulm

        "     III. Ulm.  Within the City

        "      IV. Before Ulm.  The Same Day

        "       V. The Same.  The Michaelsberg

        "      VI. London.  Spring Gardens

  Act Fifth:—

      Scene    I. Off Cape Trafalgar

             II. The Same.  The Quarter-deck of the Victory"

            III. The Same.  On Board the Bucentaure"

             IV. The Same.  The Cockpit of the Victory"

        "      V. London.  The Guildhall

        "     VI. An Inn at Rennes

        "    VII. King George's Watering-place, South Wessex

  Act Sixth:—

      Scene    I. The Field of Austerlitz.  The French Position

        "     II. The Same.  The Russian Position

        "    III. The Same.  The French Position

        "     IV. The Same.  The Russian Position

        "      V. The Same.  Near the Windmill of Paleny

        "     VI. Shockerwick House, near Bath

        "    VII. Paris.  A Street leading to the Tuileries

        "   VIII. Putney.  Bowling Green House

  PART SECOND

  Characters

  Act First:—

      Scene    I. London.  Fox's Lodgings, Arlington Street

        "     II. The Route between London and Paris

        "    III. The Streets of Berlin

        "     IV. The Field of Jena

        "      V. Berlin.  A Room overlooking a Public Place

        "     VI. The Same

        "    VII. Tilsit and the River Niemen

        "   VIII. The Same

  Act Second:—

      Scene    I. The Pyrenees and Valleys adjoining

        "     II. Aranjuez, near Madrid.  A Room in the Palace of

                      Godoy, the Prince of Peace

        "    III. London.  The Marchioness of Salisbury's

        "     IV. Madrid and its Environs

        "      V. The Open Sea between the English Coasts and the

                      Spanish Peninsula

        "     VI. St. Cloud.  The Boudoir of Josephine

        "    VII. Vimiero

  Act Third:—

      Scene    I. Spain.  A Road near Astorga

        "     II. The Same

        "    III. Before Coruna

        "     IV. Coruna.  Near the Ramparts

        "      V. Vienna.  A Cafe in the Stephans-Platz

  Act Fourth:—

      Scene    I. A Road out of Vienna

        "     II. The Island of Lobau, with Wagram beyond

        "    III. The Field of Wagram

        "     IV. The Field of Talavera

        "      V. The Same

        "     VI. Brighton.  The Royal Pavilion

        "    VII. The Same

        "   VIII. Walcheren

  Act Fifth:—

      Scene    I. Paris.  A Ballroom in the House of Cambaceres

        "     II. Paris.  The Tuileries

        "    III. Vienna.  A Private Apartment in the Imperial Palace

        "     IV. London.  A Club in St. James's Street

        "      V. The old West Highway out of Vienna

        "     VI. Courcelles

        "    VII. Petersburg.  The Palace of the Empress-Mother

        "   VIII. Paris.  The Grand Gallery of the Louvre and the

                      Salon-Carre adjoining

  Act Fifth:—

      Scene    I. The Lines of Torres Vedras

        "     II. The Same.  Outside the Lines

        "    III. Paris.  The Tuileries

        "     IV. Spain.  Albuera

        "      V. Windsor Castle.  A Room in the King's Apartments

        "     VI. London.  Carlton House and the Streets adjoining

        "    VII. The Same.  The Interior of Carlton House

  PART THIRD

  Characters

  Act First:—

      Scene     I. The Banks of the Niemen, near Kowno

        "      II. The Ford of Santa Marta, Salamanca

        "     III. The Field of Salamanca

        "      IV. The Field of Borodino

        "       V. The Same

        "      VI. Moscow

        "     VII. The Same.  Outside the City

        "    VIII. The Same.  The Interior of the Kremlin

        "      IX. The Road from Smolensko into Lithuania

        "       X. The Bridge of the Beresina

        "      XI. The Open Country between Smorgoni and Wilna

        "     XII. Paris.  The Tuileries

  Act Second:—

      Scene    I. The Plain of Vitoria

        "     II. The Same, from the Puebla Heights

        "    III. The Same.  The Road from the Town

        "     IV. A Fete at Vauxhall Gardens

  Act Third:—

      Scene    I. Leipzig.  Napoleon's Quarters in the Reudnitz Suburb

        "     II. The Same.  The City and the Battlefield

        "    III. The Same, from the Tower of the Pleissenburg

        "     IV. The Same.  At the Thonberg Windmill

        "      V. The Same.  A Street near the Ranstadt Gate

        "     VI. The Pyrenees.  Near the River Nivelle

  Act Fourth:—

      Scene    I. The Upper Rhine

        "     II. Paris.  The Tuileries

        "    III. The Same. The Apartments of the Empress

        "     IV. Fontainebleau.  A Room in the Palace

        "      V. Bayonne.  The British Camp

        "     VI. A Highway in the Outskirts of Avignon

        "    VII. Malmaison.  The Empress Josephine's Bedchamber

        "   VIII. London.  The Opera-House

  Act Fifth:—

      Scene    I. Elba.  The Quay, Porto Ferrajo

        "     II. Vienna. The Imperial Palace

        "    III. La Mure, near Grenoble

        "     IV. Schonbrunn

        "      V. London.  The Old House of Commons

        "     VI. Wessex.  Durnover Green, Casterbridge

  Act Sixth:—

      Scene    I. The Belgian Frontier

        "     II. A Ballroom in Brussels

        "    III. Charleroi.  Napoleon's Quarters

        "     IV. A Chamber overlooking a Main Street in Brussels

        "      V. The Field of Ligny

        "     VI. The Field of Quatre-Bras

        "    VII. Brussels.  The Place Royale

        "   VIII. The Road to Waterloo

  Act Seventh:—

      Scene    I. The Field of Waterloo

        "     II. The Same.  The French Position

        "    III. Saint Lambert's Chapel Hill

        "     IV. The Field of Waterloo.  The English Position

        "      V. The Same.  The Women's Camp near Mont Saint-Jean

        "     VI. The Same.  The French Position

        "    VII. The Same.  The English Position

        "   VIII. The Same.  Later

        "     IX. The Wood of Bossu

  After Scene.  The Overworld

PART FIRST

  CHARACTERS

  I. PHANTOM INTELLIGENCES

    THE ANCIENT SPIRIT OF THE YEARS/CHORUS OF THE YEARS.

    THE SPIRIT OF THE PITIES/CHORUS OF THE PITIES.

    SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC/CHORUSES OF SINISTER AND IRONIC SPIRITS.

    THE SPIRIT OF RUMOUR/CHORUS OF RUMOURS.

    THE SHADE OF THE EARTH.

    SPIRIT-MESSENGERS.

    RECORDING ANGELS.

  II. PERSONS [The names in lower case are mute figures.]

  MEN

    GEORGE THE THIRD.

    The Duke of Cumberland

    PITT.

    FOX.

    SHERIDAN.

    WINDHAM.

    WHITBREAD.

    TIERNEY.

    BATHURST AND FULLER.

    Lord Chancellor Eldon.

    EARL OF MALMESBURY.

    LORD MULGRAVE.

    ANOTHER CABINET MINISTER.

    Lord Grenville.

    Viscount Castlereagh.

    Viscount Sidmouth.

    ANOTHER NOBLE LORD.

    ROSE.

    Canning.

    Perceval.

    Grey.

    Speaker Abbot.

    TOMLINE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

    SIR WALTER FARQUHAR.

    Count Munster.

    Other Peers, Ministers, ex-Ministers, Members of Parliament,

       and Persons of Quality.

..........

    NELSON.

    COLLINGWOOD.

    HARDY.

    SECRETARY SCOTT.

    DR. BEATTY.

    DR. MAGRATH.

    DR. ALEXANDER SCOTT.

    BURKE, PURSER.

    Lieutenant Pasco.

    ANOTHER LIEUTENANT.

    POLLARD, A MIDSHIPMAN.

    Captain Adair.

    Lieutenants Ram and Whipple.

    Other English Naval Officers.

    Sergeant-Major Secker and Marines.

    Staff and other Officers of the English Army.

    A COMPANY OF SOLDIERS.

    Regiments of the English Army and Hanoverian.

    SAILORS AND BOATMEN.

    A MILITIAMAN.

    Naval Crews.

..........

    The Lord Mayor and Corporation of London.

    A GENTLEMAN OF FASHION.

    WILTSHIRE, A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

    A HORSEMAN.

    TWO BEACON-WATCHERS.

    ENGLISH CITIZENS AND BURGESSES.

    COACH AND OTHER HIGHWAY PASSENGERS.

    MESSENGERS, SERVANTS, AND RUSTICS.

..........

    NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

    DARU, NAPOLEON'S WAR SECRETARY.

    LAURISTON, AIDE-DE-CAMP.

    MONGE, A PHILOSOPHER.

    BERTHIER.

    MURAT, BROTHER-IN-LAW OF NAPOLEON.

    SOULT.

    NEY.

    LANNES.

    Bernadotte.

    Marmont.

    Dupont.

    Oudinot.

    Davout.

    Vandamme.

    Other French Marshals.

    A SUB-OFFICER.

..........

    VILLENEUVE, NAPOLEON'S ADMIRAL.

    DECRES, MINISTER OF MARINE.

    FLAG-CAPTAIN MAGENDIE.

    LIEUTENANT DAUDIGNON.

    LIEUTENANT FOURNIER.

    Captain Lucas.

    OTHER FRENCH NAVAL OFFICERS AND PETTY OFFICERS.

    Seamen of the French and Spanish Navies.

    Regiments of the French Army.

    COURIERS.

    HERALDS.

    Aides, Officials, Pages, etc.

    ATTENDANTS.

    French Citizens.

..........

    CARDINAL CAPRARA.

    Priests, Acolytes, and Choristers.

    Italian Doctors and Presidents of Institutions.

    Milanese Citizens.

..........

    THE EMPEROR FRANCIS.

    THE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND.

    Prince John of Lichtenstien.

    PRINCE SCHWARZENBERG.

    MACK, AUSTRIAN GENERAL.

    JELLACHICH.

    RIESC.

    WEIROTHER.

    ANOTHER AUSTRIAN GENERAL.

    TWO AUSTRIAN OFFICERS.

..........

    The Emperor Alexander.

    PRINCE KUTUZOF, RUSSIAN FIELD-MARSHAL.

    COUNT LANGERON.

    COUNT BUXHOVDEN.

    COUNT MILORADOVICH.

    DOKHTOROF.

..........

    Giulay, Gottesheim, Klenau, and Prschebiszewsky.

    Regiments of the Austrian Army.

    Regiments of the Russian Army.

  WOMEN

    Queen Charlotte.

    English Princesses.

    Ladies of the English Court.

    LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

    A LADY.

    Lady Caroline Lamb, Mrs. Damer, and other English Ladies.

..........

    THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

    Princesses and Ladies of Josephine's Court.

    Seven Milanese Young Ladies.

..........

    City- and Towns-women.

    Country-women.

    A MILITIAMAN'S WIFE.

    A STREET-WOMAN.

    Ship-women.

    Servants.

FORE SCENE

  THE OVERWORLD

    [Enter the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit

    and Chorus of the Pities, the Shade of the Earth, the Spirits

    Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit-

    Messengers, and Recording Angels.]

  SHADE OF THE EARTH

       What of the Immanent Will and Its designs?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       It works unconsciously, as heretofore,

       Eternal artistries in Circumstance,

       Whose patterns, wrought by rapt aesthetic rote,

       Seem in themselves Its single listless aim,

       And not their consequence.

  CHORUS OF THE PITIES [aerial music]

            Still thus?  Still thus?

            Ever unconscious!

            An automatic sense

            Unweeting why or whence?

       Be, then, the inevitable, as of old,

       Although that SO it be we dare not hold!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Hold what ye list, fond believing Sprites,

       You cannot swerve the pulsion of the Byss,

       Which thinking on, yet weighing not Its thought,

       Unchecks Its clock-like laws.

  SPIRIT SINISTER [aside]

                 Good, as before.

       My little engines, then, will still have play.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Why doth It so and so, and ever so,

       This viewless, voiceless Turner of the Wheel?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       As one sad story runs, It lends Its heed

       To other worlds, being wearied out with this;

       Wherefore Its mindlessness of earthly woes.

       Some, too, have told at whiles that rightfully

       Its warefulness, Its care, this planet lost

       When in her early growth and crudity

       By bad mad acts of severance men contrived,

       Working such nescience by their own device.—

       Yea, so it stands in certain chronicles,

       Though not in mine.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

                 Meet is it, none the less,

       To bear in thought that though Its consciousness

       May be estranged, engrossed afar, or sealed,

       Sublunar shocks may wake Its watch anon?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Nay.  In the Foretime, even to the germ of Being,

       Nothing appears of shape to indicate

       That cognizance has marshalled things terrene,

       Or will [such is my thinking] in my span.

       Rather they show that, like a knitter drowsed,

       Whose fingers play in skilled unmindfulness,

       The Will has woven with an absent heed

       Since life first was; and ever will so weave.

  SPIRIT SINISTER

       Hence we've rare dramas going—more so since

       It wove Its web in the Ajaccian womb!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Well, no more this on what no mind can mete.

       Our scope is but to register and watch

       By means of this great gift accorded us—

       The free trajection of our entities.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       On things terrene, then, I would say that though

       The human news wherewith the Rumours stirred us

       May please thy temper, Years, 'twere better far

       Such deeds were nulled, and this strange man's career

       Wound up, as making inharmonious jars

       In her creation whose meek wraith we know.

       The more that he, turned man of mere traditions,

       Now profits naught.  For the large potencies

       Instilled into his idiosyncrasy—

       To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room—

       Are taking taint, and sink to common plots

       For his own gain.

  SHADE OF THE EARTH

                 And who, then, Cordial One,

       Wouldst substitute for this Intractable?

  CHORUS OF THE EARTH

       We would establish those of kindlier build,

            In fair Compassions skilled,

       Men of deep art in life-development;

       Watchers and warders of thy varied lands,

       Men surfeited of laying heavy hands,

            Upon the innocent,

       The mild, the fragile, the obscure content

       Among the myriads of thy family.

       Those, too, who love the true, the excellent,

       And make their daily moves a melody.

  SHADE OF THE EARTH

       They may come, will they.  I am not averse.

       Yet know I am but the ineffectual Shade

       Of her the Travailler, herself a thrall

       To It; in all her labourings curbed and kinged!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Shall such be mooted now?  Already change

       Hath played strange pranks since first I brooded here.

       But old Laws operate yet; and phase and phase

       Of men's dynastic and imperial moils

       Shape on accustomed lines.  Though, as for me,

       I care not thy shape, or what they be.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       You seem to have small sense of mercy, Sire?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Mercy I view, not urge;—nor more than mark

       What designate your titles Good and Ill.

       'Tis not in me to feel with, or against,

       These flesh-hinged mannikins Its hand upwinds

       To click-clack off Its preadjusted laws;

       But only through my centuries to behold

       Their aspects, and their movements, and their mould.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       They are shapes that bleed, mere mannikins or no,

       And each has parcel in the total Will.

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Which overrides them as a whole its parts

       In other entities.

  SPIRIT SINISTER [aside]

                 Limbs of Itself:

       Each one a jot of It in quaint disguise?

       I'll fear all men henceforward!

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Go to.  Let this terrestrial tragedy—

  SPIRIT IRONIC

       Nay, Comedy—

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

                 Let this earth-tragedy

       Whereof we spake, afford a spectacle

       Forthwith conned closelier than your custom is.—

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       How does it stand?  [To a Recording Angel]

            Open and chant the page

       Thou'st lately writ, that sums these happenings,

       In brief reminder of their instant points

       Slighted by us amid our converse here.

  RECORDING ANGEL [from a book, in recitative]

       Now mellow-eyed Peace is made captive,

            And Vengeance is chartered

       To deal forth its dooms on the Peoples

            With sword and with spear.

       Men's musings are busy with forecasts

            Of muster and battle,

       And visions of shock and disaster

            Rise red on the year.

       The easternmost ruler sits wistful,

            And tense he to midward;

       The King to the west mans his borders

            In front and in rear.

       While one they eye, flushed from his crowning,

            Ranks legions around him

       To shake the enisled neighbour nation

            And close her career!

  SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS [aerial music]

       O woven-winged squadrons of Toulon

            And fellows of Rochefort,

       Wait, wait for a wind, and draw westward

            Ere Nelson be near!

       For he reads not your force, or your freightage

            Of warriors fell-handed,

       Or when they will join for the onset,

            Or whither they steer!

  SEMICHORUS II

       O Nelson, so zealous a watcher

            Through months-long of cruizing,

       Thy foes may elide thee a moment,

            Put forth, and get clear;

       And rendezvous westerly straightway

            With Spain's aiding navies,

       And hasten to head violation

            Of Albion's frontier!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Methinks too much assurance thrills your note

       On secrets in my locker, gentle sprites;

       But it may serve.—Our thought being now reflexed

       To forces operant on this English isle,

       Behoves it us to enter scene by scene,

       And watch the spectacle of Europe's moves

       In her embroil, as they were self-ordained

       According to the naive and liberal creed

       Of our great-hearted young Compassionates,

       Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear,

       As puppet-watchers him who pulls the strings.—

       You'll mark the twitchings of this Bonaparte

       As he with other figures foots his reel,

       Until he twitch him into his lonely grave:

       Also regard the frail ones that his flings

       Have made gyrate like animalcula

       In tepid pools.—Hence to the precinct, then,

       And count as framework to the stagery

       Yon architraves of sunbeam-smitten cloud.—

       So may ye judge Earth's jackaclocks to be

       No fugled by one Will, but function-free.

    [The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and

    emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the

    branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of

    Spain forming a head.  Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from

    the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed

    by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean.

    The point of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws

    near to the surface of the perturbed countries, where the peoples,

    distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing,

    crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their various cities and

    nationalities.]

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS [to the Spirit of the Pities]

       As key-scene to the whole, I first lay bare

       The Will-webs of thy fearful questioning;

       For know that of my antique privileges

       This gift to visualize the Mode is one

       [Though by exhaustive strain and effort only].

       See, then, and learn, ere my power pass again.

    [A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, enduring

    men and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one

    organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and

    vitalized matter included in the display.]

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Amid this scene of bodies substantive

       Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible,

       Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils,

       Twining and serpenting round and through.

       Also retracting threads like gossamers—

       Except in being irresistible—

       Which complicate with some, and balance all.

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       These are the Prime Volitions,—fibrils, veins,

       Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause,

       That heave throughout the Earth's compositure.

       Their sum is like the lobule of a Brain

       Evolving always that it wots not of;

       A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere,

       And whose procedure may but be discerned

       By phantom eyes like ours; the while unguessed

       Of those it stirs, who [even as ye do] dream

       Their motions free, their orderings supreme;

       Each life apart from each, with power to mete

       Its own day's measures; balanced, self complete;

       Though they subsist but atoms of the One

       Labouring through all, divisible from none;

    But this no further now.  Deem yet man's deeds self-done.

  GENERAL CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES [aerial music]

            We'll close up Time, as a bird its van,

            We'll traverse Space, as spirits can,

            Link pulses severed by leagues and years,

            Bring cradles into touch with biers;

       So that the far-off Consequence appear

            Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.—

            The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was,

       Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws,

            Which we as threads and streams discern,

            We may but muse on, never learn.

  END OF THE FORE SCENE

ACT FIRST

  SCENE I

  ENGLAND.  A RIDGE IN WESSEX

    [The time is a fine day in March 1805.  A highway crosses the

    ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen

    bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond.]

  SPIRITS OF THE YEARS

       Hark now, and gather how the martial mood

       Stirs England's humblest hearts.  Anon we'll trace

       Its heavings in the upper coteries there.

  SPIRIT SINISTER

  Ay; begin small, and so lead up to the greater.  It is a sound

  dramatic principle.  I always aim to follow it in my pestilences,

  fires, famines, and other comedies.  And though, to be sure, I did

  not in my Lisbon earthquake, I did in my French Terror, and my St.

  Domingo burlesque.

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       THY Lisbon earthquake, THY French Terror.  Wait.

       Thinking thou will'st, thou dost but indicate.

    [A stage-coach enters, with passengers outside.  Their voices

    after the foregoing sound small and commonplace, as from another

    medium.]

  FIRST PASSENGER

  There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time

  o' year.

  SECOND PASSENGER

  Yes.  It is because the King and Court are coming down here later

  on.  They wake up this part rarely!... See, now, how the Channel

  and coast open out like a chart.  That patch of mist below us is the

  town we are bound for.  There's the Isle of Slingers beyond, like a

  floating snail.  That wide bay on the right is where the Abergavenny,

  Captain John Wordsworth, was wrecked last month.  One can see half

  across to France up here.

  FIRST PASSENGER

  Half across.  And then another little half, and then all that's

  behind—the Corsican mischief!

  SECOND PASSENGER

  Yes.  People who live hereabout—I am a native of these parts—feel

  the nearness of France more than they do inland.

  FIRST PASSENGER

  That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the

  road.  This year his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon.

  SECOND PASSENGER

  May we be ready!

  FIRST PASSENGER

  Well, we ought to be.  We've had alarms enough, God knows.

    [Some companies of infantry are seen ahead, and the coach presently

    overtakes them.]

  SOLDIERS [singing as they walk]

       We be the King's men, hale and hearty,

       Marching to meet one Buonaparty;

       If he won't sail, lest the wind should blow,

       We shall have marched for nothing, O!

                              Right fol-lol!

       We be the King's men, hale and hearty,

       Marching to meet one Buonaparty;

       If he be sea-sick, says No, no!

       We shall have marched for nothing, O!

                              Right fol-lol!

    [The soldiers draw aside, and the coach passes on.]

  SECOND PASSENGER

  Is there truth in it that Bonaparte wrote a letter to the King last

  month?

  FIRST PASSENGER

  Yes, sir.  A letter in his own hand, in which he expected the King

  to reply to him in the same manner.

  SOLDIERS [continuing, as they are left behind]

       We be the King's men, hale and hearty,

       Marching to meet one Buonaparty;

       Never mind, mates; we'll be merry, though

       We may have marched for nothing, O!

                            Right fol-lol!

  THIRD PASSENGER

  And was Boney's letter friendly?

  FIRST PASSENGER

  Certainly, sir.  He requested peace with the King.

  THIRD PASSENGER

  And why shouldn't the King reply in the same manner?

  FIRST PASSENGER

  What!  Encourage this man in an act of shameless presumption, and

  give him the pleasure of considering himself the equal of the King

  of England—whom he actually calls his brother!

  THIRD PASSENGER

  He must be taken for what he is, not for what he was; and if he calls

  King George his brother it doesn't speak badly for his friendliness.

  FIRST PASSENGER

  Whether or no, the King, rightly enough, did not reply in person,

  but through Lord Mulgrave our Foreign Minister, to the effect that

  his Britannic Majesty cannot give a specific answer till he has

  communicated with the Continental powers.

  THIRD PASSENGER

  Both the manner and the matter of the reply are British; but a huge

  mistake.

  FIRST PASSENGER

  Sir, am I to deem you a friend of Bonaparte, a traitor to your

  country—-

  THIRD PASSENGER

  Damn my wig, sir, if I'll be called a traitor by you or any Court

  sycophant at all at all!

    [He unpacks a case of pistols.]

  SECOND PASSENGER

  Gentlemen forbear, forbear!  Should such differences be suffered to

  arise on a spot where we may, in less than three months, be fighting

  for our very existence?  This is foolish, I say.  Heaven alone, who

  reads the secrets of this man's heart, can tell what his meaning and

  intent may be, and if his letter has been answered wisely or no.

    [The coach is stopped to skid the wheel for the descent of the

    hill, and before it starts again a dusty horseman overtakes it.]

  SEVERAL PASSENGERS

  A London messenger!  [To horseman] Any news, sir?  We are from

  Bristol only.

  HORSEMAN

  Yes; much.  We have declared war against Spain, an error giving

  vast delight to France.  Bonaparte says he will date his next

  dispatches from London, and the landing of his army may be daily

  expected.

    [Exit horseman.]

  THIRD PASSENGER

  Sir, I apologize.  He's not to be trusted!  War is his name, and

  aggression is with him!

    [He repacks the pistols.  A silence follows.  The coach and

    passengers move downwards and disappear towards the coast.]

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       Ill chanced it that the English monarch George

       Did not respond to the said Emperor!

  SPIRIT SINISTER

       I saw good sport therein, and paean'd the Will

       To unimpel so stultifying a move!

       Which would have marred the European broil,

       And sheathed all swords, and silenced every gun

       That riddles human flesh.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

                 O say no more;

       If aught could gratify the Absolute

       'Twould verily be thy censure, not thy praise!

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       The ruling was that we should witness things

       And not dispute them.  To the drama, then.

       Emprizes over-Channel are the key

       To this land's stir and ferment.—Thither we.

    [Clouds gather over the scene, and slowly open elsewhere.]

  SCENE II

  PARIS.  OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF MARINE

    [ADMIRAL DECRES seated at a table.  A knock without.]

  DECRES

  Come in!  Good news, I hope!

    [An attendant enters.]

  ATTENDANT

  A courier, sir.

  DECRES

  Show him in straightway.

    [The attendant goes out.]

       From the Emperor

  As I expected!

  COURIER

       Sir, for your own hand

  And yours alone.

  DECRES

       Thanks.  Be in waiting near.

    [The courier withdraws.]

  DECRES reads:

  "I am resolved that no wild dream of Ind,

  And what we there might win; or of the West,

  And bold re-conquest there of Surinam

  And other Dutch retreats along those coasts,

  Or British islands nigh, shall draw me now

  From piercing into England through Boulogne

  As lined in my first plan.  If I do strike,

  I strike effectively; to forge which feat

  There's but one way—planting a mortal wound

  In England's heart—the very English land—

  Whose insolent and cynical reply

  To my well-based complaint on breach of faith

  Concerning Malta, as at Amiens pledged,

  Has lighted up anew such flames of ire

  As may involve the world.—Now to the case:

  Our naval forces can be all assembled

  Without the foe's foreknowledge or surmise,

  By these rules following; to whose text I ask

  Your gravest application; and, when conned,

  That steadfastly you stand by word and word,

  Making no question of one jot therein.

  "First, then, let Villeneuve wait a favouring wind

  For process westward swift to Martinique,

  Coaxing the English after.  Join him there

  Gravina, Missiessy, and Ganteaume;

  Which junction once effected all our keels—

  While the pursuers linger in the West

  At hopeless fault.—Having hoodwinked them thus,

  Our boats skim over, disembark the army,

  And in the twinkling of a patriot's eye

  All London will be ours.

  "In strictest secrecy carve this to shape—

  Let never an admiral or captain scent

  Save Villeneuve and Ganteaume; and pen each charge

  With your own quill.  The surelier to outwit them

  I start for Italy; and there, as 'twere

  Engrossed in fetes and Coronation rites,

  Abide till, at the need, I reach Boulogne,

  And head the enterprize.—NAPOLEON."

    [DECRES reflects, and turns to write.]

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       He buckles to the work.  First to Villeneuve,

       His onetime companion and his boyhood's friend,

       Now lingering at Toulon, he jots swift lines,

       The duly to Ganteaume.—They are sealed forthwith,

       And superscribed: Break not till on the main.

    [Boisterous singing is heard in the street.]

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       I hear confused and simmering sounds without,

       Like those which thrill the hives at evenfall

       When swarming pends.

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

                 They but proclaim the crowd,

       Which sings and shouts its hot enthusiasms

       For this dead-ripe design on England's shore,

       Till the persuasion of its own plump words,

       Acting upon mercurial temperaments,

       Makes hope as prophecy.  "Our Emperor

       Will show himself [say they] in this exploit

       Unwavering, keen, and irresistible

       As is the lightning prong.  Our vast flotillas

       Have been embodied as by sorcery;

       Soldiers made seamen, and the ports transformed

       To rocking cities casemented with guns.

       Against these valiants balance England's means:

       Raw merchant-fellows from the counting-house,

       Raw labourers from the fields, who thumb for arms

       Clumsy untempered pikes forged hurriedly,

       And cry them full-equipt.  Their batteries,

       Their flying carriages, their catamarans,

       Shall profit not, and in one summer night

       We'll find us there!"

  RECORDING ANGEL

             And is this prophecy true?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Occasion will reveal.

  SHADE OF EARTH

                 What boots it, Sire,

       To down this dynasty, set that one up,

       Goad panting peoples to the throes thereof,

       Make wither here my fruit, maintain it there,

       And hold me travailling through fineless years

       In vain and objectless monotony,

       When all such tedious conjuring could be shunned

       By uncreation?  Howsoever wise

       The governance of these massed mortalities,

       A juster wisdom his who should have ruled

       They had not been.

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

                 Nay, something hidden urged

       The giving matter motion; and these coils

       Are, maybe, good as any.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       But why any?

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Sprite of Compassions, ask the Immanent!

       I am but an accessory of Its works,

       Whom the Ages render conscious; and at most

       Figure as bounden witness of Its laws.

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

       How ask the aim of unrelaxing Will?

       Tranced in Its purpose to unknowingness?

       [If thy words, Ancient Phantom, token true.]

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       Thou answerest well.  But cease to ask of me.

       Meanwhile the mime proceeds.—We turn herefrom,

       Change our homuncules, and observe forthwith

       How the High Influence sways the English realm,

       And how the jacks lip out their reasonings there.

    [The Cloud-curtain draws.]

  SCENE III

  LONDON.  THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS

    [A long chamber with a gallery on each side supported by thin

    columns having gilt Ionic capitals.  Three round-headed windows

    are at the further end, above the Speaker's chair, which is backed

    by a huge pedimented structure in white and gilt, surmounted by the

    lion and the unicorn.  The windows are uncurtained, one being open,

    through which some boughs are seen waving in the midnight gloom

    without.  Wax candles, burnt low, wave and gutter in a brass

    chandelier which hangs from the middle of the ceiling, and in

    branches projecting from the galleries.

    The House is sitting, the benches, which extend round to the

    Speaker's elbows, being closely packed, and the galleries

    likewise full.  Among the members present on the Government

    side are PITT and other ministers with their supporters,

    including CANNING, CASTLEREAGH, LORD C. SOMERSET, ERSKINE,

    W. DUNDAS, HUSKISSON, ROSE, BEST, ELLIOT, DALLAS, and the

    general body of the party.  On the opposite side are noticeable

    FOX, SHERIDAN, WINDHAM, WHITBREAD, GREY, T. GRENVILLE, TIERNEY,

    EARL TEMPLE, PONSONBY, G. AND H. WALPOLE, DUDLEY NORTH, and

    TIMOTHY SHELLEY.  Speaker ABBOT occupies the Chair.]

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

       As prelude to the scene, as means to aid

       Our younger comrades in its construing,

       Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief

       The reasonings here of late—to whose effects

       Words of to-night form sequence.

    [The Recording Angels chant from their books, antiphonally, in a

    minor recitative.]

  ANGEL I [aerial music]

       Feeble-framed dull unresolve, unresourcefulness,

       Sat in the halls of the Kingdom's high Councillors,

       Whence the grey glooms of a ghost-eyed despondency

       Wanned as with winter the national mind.

  ANGEL II

       England stands forth to the sword of Napoleon

       Nakedly—not an ally in support of her;

       Men and munitions dispersed inexpediently;

       Projects of range and scope poorly defined.

  ANGEL I

       Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him.—

       Frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness

       Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize,

       Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.

  ANGEL II

       Ere the first fruit thereof grow audible,

       Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship,

       Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless,

       Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.

  ANGELS I AND II

       So now, to-night, in slashing old sentences,

       Hear them speak,—gravely these, those with gay-heartedness,—

       Midst their admonishments little conceiving how

       Scarlet the scroll that the years will unwind!

  SPIRIT OF THE PITIES [to the Spirit of the Years]

       Let us put on and suffer for the nonce

       The feverish fleshings of Humanity,

       And join the pale debaters here convened.

       So may thy soul be won to sympathy

       By donning their poor mould.

  SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

                 I'll humour thee,

       Though my unpassioned essence could not change

       Did I incarn in moulds of all mankind!

  SPIRIT IRONIC

  'Tis enough to make every little dog in England run to mixen to

  hear this Pitt sung so strenuously!  I'll be the third of the

  incarnate, on the chance of hearing the tune played the other way.

  SPIRIT SINISTER

  And I the fourth.  There's sure to be something in my line toward,

  where politicians gathered together!

    [The four Phantoms enter the Gallery of the House in the disguise

    of ordinary strangers.]

  SHERIDAN [rising]

  The Bill I would have leave to introduce

  Is framed, sir, to repeal last Session's Act,

  By party-scribes intituled a Provision

  For England's Proper Guard; but elsewhere known

  As Mr. Pitt's new Patent Parish Pill.  [Laughter.]

  The ministerial countenances, I mark,

  Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion—

  Why, passes sane conjecture.  It may be

  That, with a haughty and unwavering faith

  In their own battering-rams of argument,

  They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk

  To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle

  Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe,

  They are amazed at our rude disrespect

  In making mockery of an English Law

  Sprung sacred from the King's own Premier's brain!

  —I hear them snort; but let them wince at will,

  My duty must be done; shall be done quickly

  By citing some few facts.

            An Act for our defence!

  It weakens, not defends; and oversea

  Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons

  This moment know it, and can scoff thereat.

  Our people know it too—those who can peer

  Behind the scenes of this poor painted show

  Called soldiering!—The Act has failed, must fail,

  As my right honourable friend well proved

  When speaking t'other night, whose silencing

  By his right honourable vis a vis  Was of the genuine Governmental sort,

  And like the catamarans their sapience shaped

  All fizzle and no harm.  [Laughter.]  The Act, in brief,

  Effects this much: that the whole force of England

  Is strengthened by—eleven thousand men!

  So sorted that the British infantry

  Are now eight hundred less than heretofore!

  In Ireland, where the glamouring influence

  Of the right honourable gentleman

  Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men

  Have been amassed.  And in the Cinque-Port towns,

  Where he is held in absolute veneration,

  His method has so quickened martial fire

  As to bring in—one man.  O would that man

  Might meet my sight!  [Laughter.]  A Hercules, no doubt,

  A god-like emanation from this Act,

  Who with his single arm will overthrow

  All Buonaparte's legions ere their keels

  Have scraped one pebble of our fortless shore!...

  Such is my motion, sir, and such my mind.

  [He sits down amid cheers.  The candle-snuffers go round, and Pitt

  rises.  During the momentary pause before he speaks the House assumes

  an attentive stillness, in which can be heard the rustling of the

  trees without, a horn from an early coach, and the voice of the watch

  crying the hour.]

  PITT

  Not one on this side but appreciates

  Those mental gems and airy pleasantries

  Flashed by the honourable gentleman,

  Who shines in them by birthright.  Each device

  Of drollery he